Feds gave a former Trump staffer $3 Million to supply masks to Navajo hospitals — but some may not work


Published on May 22, 2020 By Pro Publica


ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

A former White House aide won a $3 million federal contract to supply respirator masks to Navajo Nation hospitals in New Mexico and Arizona 11 days after he created a company to sell personal protective equipment in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Zach Fuentes, President Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, secured the deal with the Indian Health Service with limited competitive bidding and no prior federal contracting experience.

The IHS told ProPublica it has found that 247,000 of the masks delivered by Fuentes’ company — at a cost of roughly $800,000 — may be unsuitable for medical use. An additional 130,400, worth about $422,000, are not the type specified in the procurement data, the agency said.

What’s more, the masks Fuentes agreed to provide — Chinese-made KN95s — have come under intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators amid concerns that they offered inadequate protection.

“The IHS Navajo Area Office will determine if these masks will be returned,” the agency said in a statement. The agency said it is verifying Fuentes’ company’s April 8 statement to IHS that all the masks were certified by the Food and Drug Administration, and an FDA spokesperson said the agency cannot verify if the products were certified without the name of the manufacturer.

Hospitals in the Navajo Nation, which spans Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, have been desperate for protective supplies as the numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths have grown quickly. As of Friday, the Navajo Nation reported 4,434 COVID-19 cases and 147 deaths, a crisis that has prompted outcries from members of Congress and demands for increased funding.

Fuentes initiated email contact with officials at IHS, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency said. After the contact, the agency informally solicited prices from a handful of face mask providers and chose Fuentes of the six companies that responded because his firm offered the best price and terms, IHS said. Fuentes also benefited from government procurement rules favoring veteran- and minority-owned businesses, the procurement data shows.

Fuentes said political connections to the Trump White House played no role in his company’s selection. “Nobody referred me from the White House. It was nothing like that,” he said. “Emphatically no.”

The White House did not respond to a question about Fuentes’ contract.

IHS told ProPublica that Fuentes’ company reported that the masks were made in China, but the agency did not specify the manufacturer. Federal contracting records show without explanation that Fuentes refunded $250,000 to the IHS this month, and he said in an interview last week that he gave back money when he procured masks at a slightly reduced cost.

“We went back to IHS and said, ‘We were able to get this cheaper,’” Fuentes said. “We will never gouge our customers.”

Fuentes referred questions about the mask manufacturer and FDA certifications to his consultant, Sia N. Ashok, a business school classmate. In a phone interview, Ashok declined to name the manufacturer because it could violate the company’s contract, she said.

Ashok said the company lived up to the terms of its contract with IHS and has all the FDA certifications it needs in place.

“If the customer or IHS or anyone has any issues with anything, we would be more than happy to replace,” she said.

Fuentes’ contract price of $3.24 per mask is more expensive than the pre-pandemic rate of about $1 per mask, but far less than what some government entities have paid at the height of the crisis. Mask costs can vary widely depending on availability, demand, quality and exact specifications.

Fuentes is a retired Coast Guard officer and protege of former White House chief of staff John Kelly. He formerly served as Kelly’s military aide while he was secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Fuentes followed Kelly to the White House. In December 2018, as Kelly prepared to leave, The New York Times reported that Fuentes had told associates he planned to “hide out” in a vague role at the White House until he qualified for a Coast Guard early retirement program. Fuentes retired in January from the Coast Guard after 15 years of service. He said his retirement was for medical reasons.

He jumped into the federal contracting world in April at a time of great opportunity — and high risk. The coronavirus pandemic loosened many federal procurement rules as agencies scrambled to respond to a national emergency. But as supplies of personal protective equipment ran out and many countries restricted exports, delivering on contracts became more difficult, and agencies have wrestled with incomplete orders, cancellations and possible counterfeit goods.

N95 masks were so scarce that the FDA in April allowed the use of some Chinese masks that had not been certified by U.S. regulators. But in recent weeks, the FDA narrowed its guidance after tests indicated that some of the products were not as effective as they should be, and it tightened restrictions on the use of Chinese masks by hospital and medical personnel.

Fuentes formed Zach Fuentes LLC as the emergency regulations were evolving.

In April, the FDA authorized the use of masks made by close to 90 manufacturers in China.

But the masks made by some of those manufacturers did not pass CDC tests because they did not filter out enough fine particles. In some cases, the masks failed utterly.

This month, the FDA rescinded its authorization for the vast majority of the Chinese manufacturers, published a much smaller list of respirators made by 14 approved manufacturers and tightened the standards for evaluating Chinese masks.

Eleven federal agencies, including IHS, have reported buying either KN95 masks, or N95 masks made outside the United States, according to contract data. Of those, Fuentes’ contract with IHS is the second-largest that mentions KN95 masks specifically. The largest contract was struck by FEMA, for $3.9 million, on May 4.

Overall, IHS has spent $85.4 million to respond to COVID-19 as of May 22, signing 318 contracts with 211 vendors, according to federal procurement records. The masks provided by Fuentes went to five IHS medical facilities and to a government warehouse.

Fuentes’ new company has also received a much smaller contract from the Bureau of Prisons to provide 10,000 N95 masks for $1.31 each, according to a BOP statement to ProPublica and procurement documents.

One IHS hospital slated to receive masks from Fuentes is the Gallup Indian Medical Center in New Mexico. A doctor there, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the facility initially had a shortage of protective equipment. Conditions have improved thanks to federal purchases and donations, he said, though staffers still have to reuse masks up to five times each, he said.

“IHS facilities have sufficient quantities of N95 respirators at this time,” an agency spokesman said.

Cuba dreading Trump re-election, says diplomat




Published May 23, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


The re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States would be “the worst” scenario for Cuba, Havana’s top diplomat in charge of relations with Washington told AFP.

“If the Republicans win … it’s a very negative scenario,” said Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, the foreign ministry’s general director for the US.

“It would mean at least a continuation of the policy of aggression against our country.”

Cuba has been subjected to a US embargo since 1962 — but, under Democratic President Barack Obama, tensions were easing.

Then Trump took power and began ramping up sanctions once more, cancelling or suspending many of the agreements made during Obama’s term.

In 2019 Trump added more than 80 sanctions, including those that hinder the supply of Venezuelan oil, discourage investments, give the green light for compensation claims in US courts against nationalized properties, and block commercial and financial activity.

Added to that, the general lockdown that has been provoked by the coronavirus pandemic has worsened the social situation for millions of Cubans in a country that was already suffering from food and fuel shortages.

Trump addressed a message on Wednesday to the Cuban community in Florida — a key swing state in November’s US election — in which he blasted “Cuba’s tyrannical regime.”

Many Cuban exiles and immigrants in Florida are passionately opposed to the communist regime in Havana, including Republican senator Marco Rubio.

Miami in particular is a hotbed of anti-Castro organizations that have been involved in sometimes violent activities against Cuba.

Fernandez de Cossio said a second Trump mandate would be even worse than the first because it would keep “people with an anti-Cuban trajectory” in “important positions inside the government, in the State Department structures or the National Security Council.”

– No desire to end diplomacy –

Despite that hostility, “Cuba has no interest in a breakup of relations with the United States,” said Fernandez de Cossio, although he insisted the island nation would be “ready” if that did happen.

Fernandez de Cossio claims that the Trump administration is “forcing officials, some of them with a long career, to lie openly, which is what is happening with State Department officials and even the embassy here in Havana.”
Even so, and despite criticism from the US Charge d’Affaires in Havana, Mara Tekach, Cuba has a history of tolerating hostile diplomats on its territory.

Fernandez de Cossio says “we don’t need to expel them.”

The hostility is evident in both countries.

On April 30, a Cuban immigrant fired 30 shots at the Cuban embassy in Washington.

Although he was detained immediately, Cuba says it has received no official communication from Washington on the case.

Havana has accused the US police of “complicity” in what it describes as an act of “terrorism.”

Fernandez de Cossio believes the US government doesn’t want to lift the lid on its own “links to this individual or with organizations or people with a history or with aggressive behavior towards Cuba.”

If that Pandora’s Box were opened, “the links to organizations with terrorist origins that exist in the United States within the law, in complicity, with protection from the United States government” would emerge.

“That’s the only way one can explain, other than the arrogance, … of this unyielding silence” from Washington, he added.


© 2020 AFP

Judge dismisses One America News defamation lawsuit against Rachel Maddow

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a $10 million defamation lawsuit by One America News (OAN) against Rachel Maddow, finding that a "reasonable viewer" would know the MSNBC prime-time host was only offering her opinion when she called the right-leaning network "paid Russian propaganda."

"Maddow had inserted her own colorful commentary into and throughout the segment, laughing, expressing her dismay (i.e., saying 'I mean, what?') and calling the segment a 'sparkly story' and one we must 'take in stride,'" Judge Cynthia Bashant wrote Friday.

"For her to exaggerate the facts and call OAN Russian propaganda was consistent with her tone up to that point, and the Court finds a reasonable viewer would not take the statement as factual given this context," Bashant added.

The suit filed in September argued that Maddow made "utterly and completely false" statements about OAN being "paid Russian propaganda" because the network "is wholly financed by the Herrings, an American family, [and] has never been paid or received a penny from Russia or the Russian government."

Maddow also cited a report from The Daily Beast, which found OAN employed "a Kremlin-paid journalist."

"Instead, he or she would follow the facts of the Daily Beast article; that OAN and Sputnik share a reporter and both pay this reporter to write articles. Anything beyond this is Maddow’s opinion or her exaggeration of the facts," the judge noted in the ruling.

OAN responded by saying it will appeal the decision.
"The Herrings and OAN do not receive any money from the Russian government, OAN does not get paid by Russia, and OAN has absolutely no relationship with Russia," the company said in a statement. "The court’s finding that no reasonable person could conclude that Maddow’s statement was one of fact is incorrect."
The cable news channel launched in 2013 and has national distribution on DirecTV, Verizon Fios and AT&T U-verse. It can be seen in approximately 35 million homes.

‘Unhinged conspiracy-monger’ Trump and the GOP are mired in a ‘cesspool’ of paranoia: conservative

Published on May 23, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Saturday, writing for The Washington Post, conservative columnist Max Boot outlined key reasons why the spread of conspiracy theories has become more dangerous than ever in modern America.

One of the most important reasons: They are being amplified and promoted by the man in the Oval Office.

“Every great disaster of the past century has brought forth conspiracy-mongers. They claimed that World War I was started by arms manufacturers, a.k.a. ‘merchants of death’; that Franklin D. Roosevelt goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor and knew all about it in advance; that homegrown traitors ‘lost’ Eastern Europe and China to communism; that the military industrial complex assassinated John F. Kennedy; that the crack cocaine epidemic was started by the CIA; that 9/11 was an ‘inside job’; and that George W. Bush invaded Iraq to help Halliburton,” wrote Boot.

“The impulse to ‘conspiracize’ is as old as the human race. Often that means blaming despised minorities for larger ills,” wrote Boot. “Plagues have been a particularly rich breeding ground for conspiracy theories. In 14th century Europe, Jews were massacred after being accused of spreading the bubonic plague by poisoning wells. So it is no surprise that there is now an epidemic of coronavirus conspiracy theories.”

“The virus was said to have been started by a Chinese biological warfare laboratory, the U.S. Army, Bill Gates or a ‘globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control’ — and it is said to be spread by 5G towers,” wrote Boot. “A movie called ‘Plandemic’ alleges that masks make you sick, that bleach can heal you and that a vaccine may kill you; it has been viewed at least 8 million times online. Naturally, the novel coronavirus has been subsumed into the all-encompassing QAnon conspiracy theory that has become a quasi-religion among some Trump supporters. They think that the virus was created by the ‘deep state’ to bring down their hero.”

All of this is worse, Boot wrote, because “we now have an unhinged conspiracy-monger in the White House.”

“When he is not ranting about a vast, nebulous plot perpetrated by the prior administration (‘Obamagate’) or about how Joe Scarborough supposedly murdered an aide, Trump is opining that the virus started in a Chinese lab, that hydroxychloroquine is an effective prophylactic, and that injections of bleach can treat the disease,” wrote Boot. “His son, Eric, recently said that the coronavirus has been hyped by Democrats eager to stop his dad from holding rallies, and that ‘after Nov. 3, coronavirus, will magically all of a sudden go away.'”

“This is nuts, but it gains credence by being promulgated by authority figures,” wrote Boot. “In fact, the entire GOP — which just nominated a QAnon believer as its Senate candidate in Oregon — is becoming a modern-day Know Nothing Party, a cesspool of prejudice and irrationality. What was once the fringe has now moved into the mainstream — and will become even more prominent as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Let’s hope that people can find saner and safer ways to make sense of this terrible time, because if they give in to irrationality, our current predicament will only get worse.”

You can read more here.

Evangelical leader who believes COVID-19 is a ‘gift from god’ unveils strategy to keep Trump in office


May 23, 2020 By Matthew Chapman 

THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT BIBLE BASED CHRISTIANS
THEY ARE AMERICAN PROTESTANT EVANGELICALS
A FORM OF SPIRITUALISM WHERE THEY BECOME
POSSESSED BY THEIR LORD THOUGH SINCE THEY HAVE
NO MAGICKAL PROTECTION THEIR LORD COULD BE
ANYTHING INCLUDING CTHULHU

On Saturday, The Intercept detailed a recent gathering of United in Purpose, a far-right evangelical group that plans to get President Donald Trump re-elected in 2020.

One of the group’s donors, Ken Eldred, espoused his beliefs on a call in mid-April.

“’The COVID virus has been a gift from God,’ began Ken Eldred. ‘The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters.’ In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Eldred noted, millions of Americans are turning to Christ, Walmart is selling out of Bibles, and online church broadcasts have hit record numbers,” reported Lee Fang. “But while religiosity was growing, there have been setbacks from the disease outbreak. ‘Satan has been busy too,’ Eldred, a major donor to evangelical and Republican causes, explained. ‘The virus has messed up many of our plans involving our in-person meetings with voters.'”

He then led the group in a prayer to God to end the deaths — and the group discussed strategy to keep the president in office.

“The group, whose supporters include major donors to conservative causes, pastors, and political operatives with decades of winning elections, is serious about serving as the tip of the spear to maintain control of the White House,” wrote Fang. “UIP’s 2020 election plan — which it calls ‘Ziklag,’ a town referenced in the Bible — is a multipronged effort to connect Trump with evangelical leaders and increase support among minority voters through appeals to faith-based messages and church outreach.”

“And, perhaps most importantly, it plans to use data mining to identify millions of new voters and target them with cheap ads on Facebook,” wrote Fang. “The pandemic, speakers noted on the call, means that they must work overtime to compensate for the effects of mail-in voting.”

Eldred expressed this sentiment clearly when he told his fellows on the call, “The children of the darkness put early voting into this CARES package.”

With Covid-19, the Alex Jonesification of the GOP is now complete

May 23, 2020 By Joshua Holland- Commentary


Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

A poll released on Friday found that 44 percent of Republicans–and half of those who say their primary source of information is Fox News–believe that Bill Gates “wants to use a mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 to implant microchips in people” so the globalists or the lizard-people or whomever can track our movements. More disturbingly, perhaps, was that only one-in-four of both Republicans and Fox News viewers said that claim was false.

Digitally tracking Americans’ every move has been a dream of the globalists for years. This health crisis is the perfect vehicle for them to push this. https://t.co/nkc0mSrM9u
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) April 7, 2020
Crowds at these goofy anti-lockdown rallies have called for Bill Gates, who is investing billions in tackling the pandemic, to be locked up for unspecified crimes. If the anti-Semitic and conspiratorial John Birch Society had dominated the GOP in 1953, Jonas Salk, who developed the first effective vaccine against polio, probably would have faced similar nonsense.

There’s a popular myth that the Birch Society was excommunicated from the GOP by serious members of the Republican establishment, but as Jeet Heer wrote during the 2016 campaign, that is “almost completely false.”

The Birch Society didn’t disappear after Buckley’s “excommunication,” but continued to be a major force on the right, peaking in influence in the 1970s and still existing to this day. More to the point, Bircher paranoia never went out of fashion on the right: It’s there in everything from Birtherism—Trump’s first excursion into the world of Obama conspiracies—to the antics of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones.

In this sense, Trump is more symptom than cause. But the emergence of Covid-19, shortly after Trump’s acquittal by the GOP, has pushed the mainstream right entirely over the edge. Broad swaths of the coalition believe that the virus was man-made–only 37 percent of Republicans told Pew that it was a natural occurrence back in April. The idea that the media are hyping the danger to hurt Trump–outlandish on its face given that the disease has spread across the entire planet–is almost universally embraced by the right.

The Republican nominee for Oregon Senate is a QAnon devotee. Presumably, she believes that prominent Democrats are in league with the Deep State to molest and eat babies. The party is also “backing away” from a House candidate in California who spread, among other things, conspiracy theories about Seth Rich, a former Clinton staffer who was murdered during a robbery in DC. The most outrageous claims are mainstream in today’s GOP.

Absolutely bizarre. The Bexar County GOP chair concludes this rally by stating that the coronavirus is a hoax perpetrated by Democrats, tells people to take off their masks, and then everyone hugs each other. pic.twitter.com/1XOFeswMiO
 Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) May 22, 2020


Conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism, a way of seeing some sort of order in a chaotic world. The pandemic has made it more so, and this kind of nonsense is proliferating across the coalition, sometimes with deadly effects.
*****

Relatedly, from The Daily Beast:
A shocking report suggesting that the coronavirus was “release[d from] the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China is now circulating in U.S. military and intelligence circles and on Capitol Hill. But there’s a critical flaw in the report, a Daily Beast analysis reveals: Some of its most seemingly persuasive evidence is false—provably false.
*****
Donald Trump has no power to order states to lift lockdown measures on houses of worship, but he blustered to that effect anyway on Friday. But we should understand the game: Most states are moving to reopen anyway, and would have eased restrictions on in-person services in the next week or two anyway. According to Politico, Trump is ginning up a stupid new front in the culture war for the simple reason that his support among the religious right appears to be slipping.

The anxiety over Trump’s standing with the Christian right surfaced after a pair of surveys by reputable outfits earlier this month found waning confidence in the administration’s coronavirus response among key religious groups, with a staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics. Both are crucial constituencies that supported Trump by wide margins in 2016 and could sink his reelection prospects if their turnout shrinks this fall.

*****
Trump’s COVID-19 vaccine czar, Moncef Slaoui, has a “huge conflict of interest,” according to The Huffington Post, which reports that “federal filings revealed he holds $10 million in stock options in one of the companies working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.”

*****

Easiest grift in the world
The Trump administration has reportedly inked a $1.3bn deal with a North Dakota construction firm aiming to build 42 miles of border wall after its CEO praised the president in multiple interviews with conservative media. [The Independent]

***
Trump’s move to fire Steve Linick, the State Department Inspector General who had been investigating Mike Pompeo, got a lot of attention but Trump also fired the U.S. Department of Transportation’s watchdog, Mitch Behm, who had been investigating Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, according to CREW.

At DOT, the acting IG was overseeing a high profile investigation of Secretary Chao’s alleged favoritism benefiting her husband Senator Mitch McConnell’s political prospects, but has now been replaced with a political appointee from within the agency. The acting IG’s ouster calls into question the future of the Chao-McConnell investigation, other critical oversight, and whether the watchdog was dismissed for unearthing damaging information.

This move is the latest salvo of Trump’s assault on oversight. And it looks like the President made sure to cover all his bases to block accountability, not only nominating an IG to succeed the experienced watchdog who held the post, but also demoting the acting IG who was investigating Chao, and installing a political appointee to serve in his place while the Senate considers a permanent replacement. To make matters worse, Trump’s pick to be the new acting IG, Howard “Skip” Elliott, already has a job overseeing the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), an office he will now also be in charge of policing.

Related:

I REPEAT:
IT IS ILLEGAL FOR TRUMP’S ACTING IG TO HAVE STARTED WORKING AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT THIS WEEK. THE LAW FORBIDS REMOVAL OF AN IG DURING THE 30-DAY NOTICE PERIOD. IF EVEN FOUR SENATE REPUBLICANS CARED ABOUT LAWS, THEY WOULD STOP THIS BY BLOCKING TRUMP’S NOMINEES. GOT IT?
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) May 21, 2020

*****

Also related…
“It’s a political coup, there really can be no question about it.” — Republican former Barr aide Stuart M. Gerson https://t.co/5RsPc9VaNL
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) May 18, 2020

*****
A lot has happened during the Trump years that would have been difficult to predict in 2015 or 2016. This, via The Washington Post, is not one of them:

The Trump administration has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992 in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions.

The United States has not conducted a nuclear test explosion since September 1992, and nuclear nonproliferation advocates warned that doing so now could have destabilizing consequences.

*****
A normal political party would probably be distancing itself from Georgia Sen Kelly Loeffler. She’s taken fire for apparently engaging in insider trading, and is trailing behind both fellow Republican Doug Collins and Democrat Raphael Warnock in the polls.

But Loeffler holds an advantage because of her party’s corruption, according to The New York Times.

Trump personally pushed the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, last fall to select Mr. Collins to fill the vacant Senate seat Ms. Loeffler now occupies. But the governor wanted to appoint someone who he felt could expand the party’s appeal in the suburbs of Atlanta, where Republicans have been shedding support in recent years. Ms. Loeffler’s vast wealth was an added appeal; she has pledged to pump $20 million or more of her own fortune into the race.

Ms. Loeffler’s supporters in Washington want Mr. Trump to understand what he would be risking by abandoning the wealthy Ms. Loeffler: her husband, one top Senate Republican official noted on Friday, just donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s “super PAC” last month, and the couple have directed tens of thousands of dollars more to key Senate races.

*****
We’ll leave you this week with three stories which highlight that the cruelty is indeed the point–along with some greed.
Trump Judge Elizabeth Branch cast the deciding vote in this 2–1 decision denying soap and disinfectant to people incarcerated in a Miami JAIL. Now more than 300 of them have tested positive for COVID-19. https://t.co/P5VzkRnK8x https://t.co/W4iNO4yfDH
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 18, 2020

Politico reported that “more than 40,000 National Guard members currently helping states test residents for the coronavirus and trace the spread of infections will face a ‘hard stop’ on their deployments on June 24 — just one day shy of many members becoming eligible for key federal benefits.”

The looming loss of crucial frontline workers, along with questions about whether the administration is shortchanging first responders, would require a delicate messaging strategy, the official — representing FEMA’s New England region — told dozens of colleagues on [an] interagency call.

“We would greatly benefit from unified messaging regarding the conclusion of their services prior to hitting the 90-day mark and the retirement benefit implications associated with it,” the official said.

The U.S. has rejected WHO language that would allow poorer countries to copy its coronavirus vaccines or drugs once developed, arguing it will stifle innovation.

In doing so, they seem to be arguing that innovation is more important than human lives. https://t.co/unVieRdyV1

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) May 22, 2020

GOP betting 2020 election success on selling ‘crazy talk’ and conspiracy theories to voters: columnist

 May 22, 2020 By Tom Boggioni

Surveying the expanding 2020 election campaigns that are managing to cut through the wall-to-wall coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that has brought the U.S. — and the world at large — to a standstill, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson claimed that Republicans appear to be going all-in on pushing conspiracy theories to retain the White House and their Senate majority status.

According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, “Senate Republicans have made their choice: They’re putting on their tinfoil hats and staking their political future on transparent lies and wild conspiracy theories. The onetime ‘Party of Lincoln’ threatens to become the ‘Party of Q.'”

Of note, Robinson points out, is the GOP’s Senate nominee in Oregon, Jo Rae Perkins, who is an adherent of QAnon conspiracy theories as Republican leaders st

Perkins “….avidly promotes the absurd and wholly fictitious QAnon story line. Adherents see President Trump as a heroic warrior fighting to save America and the world from an evil cabal of ‘globalist,’ sex-trafficking ‘elites’ who include moles within the government known as the ‘deep state.’ The supposed proof? Enigmatic posts on anonymous message boards from a ‘Q Clearance Patriot’ who claims to have the inside dope on a coming ‘Storm’ that will wash away this faction and purify the country.”

“Reality check: No, it’s not,” Robinson wrote. “It’s crazy talk, on the level of the paranoid speculation in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ that Russians were using fluoride to taint Americans’ ‘precious bodily fluids.'”

It would be one thing, the columnist notes, if it was just one fringe candidate promoting a conspiracy theories to a gullible public, but some of Perkins’ theories are already being tossed about in Congress.



“Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for example, complained last year that there are ‘Republican senators up here whose allegiance is more to the deep state than it is to the president.’ At the time, Paul was arguing that the Senate should be holding hearings about Trump’s claim that the whole investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was nothing but a conspiracy to destroy Trump’s presidency,” Robinson wrote. “If paranoid rants like this were just electoral performance art, that would be deplorable enough. But Republicans are using the power of their office to grant wishes to fantasists such as Paul, and to bolster conspiracy-minded voters who crave the feeling that they’re always on the brink of a major revelation.”

According to the columnist, the GOP is already on the ropes when it comes to the November election, and lawmakers may be looking for a lifeline — hence appealing to a fringe element of the electorate.

“Polls show Trump trailing badly against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Trump, who fancies himself a marketing genius, has so damaged the Republican brand that the party is in danger of losing Senate seats in Montana, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina and Maine — for starters. Even in South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham is having to look over his shoulder at Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, who outraised him last quarter. The GOP’s 53-to-47 majority is in real peril of being erased,” Robinson explained.


“Republicans could have decided to cut Trump loose and try to save themselves — and, in the end, perhaps some will take that route. But Trump has so remade the Republican base in his own image, including by providing encouragement to a near-cult, that, as Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the party whip, told Politico: ‘I just think that everybody realizes that our fortunes sort of rise or fall together.'” He wrote before warning, “An actor killed President Abraham Lincoln. A different kind of fiction may kill his party.

You can read more here

Oil companies can set their own royalty rates from drilling on public lands thanks to Trump: report

May 23, 2020 By Common Dreams- Commentary


In a display of loyalty to what Greenpeace called “the most polluting industry in history,” the Trump administration is allowing dozens of oil and gas companies to set their own rates for royalties they’re required to pay on revenue generated from drilling on public lands.

As High Country News reported Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) contacted its state offices the day after global oil prices plunged to below $0 per barrel as the Covid-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented drop in demand.

The federal agency, which oversees 96,000 oil and gas wells and more than 24,000 leases on public lands, ordered state officials to encourage more drilling despite an excess supply of oil which was forcing companies to pay for oil storage.
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In addition to suspending lease payments, BLM told states to allow companies to apply for relief from royalties, the mandatory taxes on the revenue the fossil fuel industry earns, which are used to support public schools, higher education, and healthcare in Western states.

According to High Country News, BLM instructed state offices to allow oil and gas companies to decide how much they want to pay in royalties for the duration of the pandemic, suggesting that the standard rate of 12.5% be reduced to as low as 0.5%.

“Trump and his fossil fuel cronies continue to use the cover of a deadly pandemic to bail out the fossil fuel industry in every way possible. Public lands should be used for public good—instead they’re being handed over to fossil fuel billionaires at rock-bottom rates,” Collin Rees, senior campaigner at Oil Change International, told Common Dreams. “We need to phase out all drilling on public lands as quickly as possible, but in the meantime, fossil fuel companies must be held accountable for the damage they’re doing.”

Climate action group Greenpeace called the scheme an “ill-fated oil bailout,” the profits of which are likely to go to fossil fuel CEOs, and not rank-and-file workers in the industry.

“Oil and gas corporations already pay pennies compared to what they make in profits from plundering public lands—land that belongs to the American people—and now they’ll pay even less,” said campaigner Charlie Jiang. “The Interior Department’s priorities could not be more wrong. Nurses need masks. Essential workers need paid leave, hazard pay, and childcare. Employees need paychecks. People need help all over this country. But every day the Trump administration ignores their pleas and caters to billionaire donors instead.”

Between April 30 and May 18, BLM offices approved 76 requests by companies for lower royalty rates, with some requesting 0.5% or 0.0%. The royalty relief is being offered as the federal government continues to hold lease sales and auctions across the West, offering drilling leases at bargain prices due to the market’s downturn.

The cheap sales combined with low or non-existent royalty payments “means lower financial return on federal oil for energy-dependent Western states,” wrote Nick Bowlin at High Country News.

“Oil and gas companies are struggling,” added Bowlin. “But so are Western states, and the new BLM policies allow companies to drill for public resources while generating scant public revenue.”

As oil companies are being offered relief—amid calls, bolstered by the struggling market, by progressives to nationalize fossil fuel industries in order to aid in a transition to renewable energy—the Trump administration this week abruptly ended a rent holiday for solar and wind companies operating on federal lands, demanding $50 million in back rent payments.

Renewable energy firms are struggling amid the pandemic, with many projects delayed and access to federal subsidies cut off. Before the coronavirus began spreading around the world, however, the solar and wind power sectors were growing faster than fossil fuel industries.

Scene: global pandemic.
Trump Admin to oil/gas companies: it’s tough out there; let us know if you need royalty relief, and we’ll review the application within 5 days.
Trump Admin to solar/wind companies: here’s a massive, retroactive bill for rent. Pay up by June. https://t.co/U91YNeKBbj
— Kate Kelly (@katepkelly) May 18, 2020

On social media, Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.) called on Congress to pass the ReWIND Act, which would block the Trump administration from cutting royalty rates.

No surprise the Trump Admin approved EVERY SINGLE royalty rate cut request for oil & gas leases in Utah, costing taxpayers millions of $.

The #ReWINDAct is more relevant now than ever. It would block Trump from cutting royalty rates.
#NoBigOilBailout
https://t.co/01Nac18EHV
— Nanette D. Barragán (@RepBarragan) May 22, 2020

“Congress must step in and stop this ill-fated oil bailout by passing the ReWIND Act before it goes any further,” said Jiang.

On Trump, masks and masculinity: What the president’s bare face really reveals

 Published By- Commentary Michael Kramp, Salon
on May 23, 2020

On Thursday, President Trump visited a Ford manufacturing plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The state’s Attorney General, Dana Nessel, had requested that Trump comply with the plant’s policy that all visitors wear face coverings. The President did not abide. Trump explained that while he briefly wore a special presidential face mask backstage, he “didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”
Thursday’s event was the most recent of a series of public appearances in which the President has tried to promote reopening of the country, including schools, sports, and, of course, businesses, in an attempt to jump-start the stagnant economy. And his deliberate public promotion of the nation’s reopening without wearing a mask, despite federal guidelines, is only his latest and most conspicuous artifice — perhaps his greatest mask to date.

 

The President has received consistent media attention over the past two weeks for his maskless public appearances, and most commentators have treated his actions through a familiar lens: a president who wants to convey vigorous strength, manly courage, and bold confidence as he convinces a wary public to go back to business.
I think that perspective misses the point about Trump, his masculinity, and, perhaps most importantly, his artifice. While the rest of us wear masks as we shop for groceries and venture to medical appointments, Trump has chosen to mask reality by opting against a face covering. He continues to obfuscate science, obscure the truth, and attempt to hide behind a veneer of carefully crafted masculinity — and he certainly does not need a protective mask to do so.
As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, we have donned the artifice of masks, altered our routines, gone without haircuts, missed important milestones with our loved ones. We have learned much about ourselves — our breathing, our imperfect appearances, our priorities.
And as Trump shamelessly promotes the reopening of the economy while refusing to wear a mask, his behavior explicitly shows his artifice, making his insecurity painfully clear. As many have pointed out, he’s determined to put forth confidence in the nation’s reopening. In discussing the President’s refusal to wear a mask, Chris Cillizza of CNN claims that Trump “wants the image that the public gets of him to be that of a strong and fearless leader.” On Thursday, Trump presented this façade as “Built Trump tough.”

Does anyone really believe that a man who endlessly belittles others, eschews responsibility, refuses to cooperate with people who do not remain endlessly loyal, threatens the expansion of democracy, and openly suggests that people may need to sacrifice their lives to jump-start the economy is strong and fearless? Or, to put it another way, is anyone who is not already determined to adore Donald Trump — even if he were to “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone” — really convinced that a man who denigrates from a Twitter app is strong or fearless? A bully, sure, but everyone who survived middle school remembers full well that bullies are scarred with fear and rely upon artifice, often techniques they learned from their parents.
As Trump completed his trip to the Ford plant in Michigan, a battleground state he has targeted with his Twitter attacks—both against the governor’s leadership and distribution of applications for mail-in ballots—we saw Trump’s artifice on full display. He was petty, spiteful, and theatrical; he claims he donned a mask backstage and then removed it for the press.
We need to recognize the artifice of Trump and not reinforce his behavior with the kind of rhetoric that only fuels his performance. Jackson Katz, for example, recently addressing the mask issue, claimed “Donald Trump is simply not man enough to be president of the United States.” For Katz, this claim “defies conventional wisdom” that upholds Trump as “a prototypical alpha man.”
Katz echoes many of Cillizza’s points on Trump’s bravado, but superficially engages with feminist work that has exposed the artifice of men’s behavior, especially powerful men like Trump. And Katz ultimately adopts the demeaning, phallic, even bullying language we might associate . . . well, with Trump, as he ends his piece by concluding that “the most powerful man in the world is such a small man, utterly incapable of rising to the occasion.”
We need to rethink the question of masculinity and the mask. While we may think the absence of the mask exposes truth, we are all dependent on artifice, and men, perhaps more than ever, need to acknowledge our artifice, our dependencies, our insecurities that reveal the truth of who we are, especially in this moment of great vulnerability.
Artifice helps to mask our fear. Cosmetics might cover up our imperfections. Acting as a bully can hide our insecurities. Trump’s refusal to wear a mask obscures the realities of the pandemic, including the missteps of his leadership and the gravity of the nation’s — indeed, the world’s — loss. Trump’s refusal to wear a mask tells us plenty about his masculinity, but it’s not what he wanted to show.